From women and children to a supposedly ne’re-do-well Irishman – from visiting Roma to a famous local Mississauga Ojibway athlete and his wife – from the teenage working-class Cathleen McCarthy to the Grants, a relatively well-off family – attendance at early motion pictures shows a surprising diversity.

By the 1920s a mass audience was appreciating the thrills and spills of the modern moving picture show. People in Peterborough could see movies daily at the Capitol and Royal theatres on George Street, the Regent on Hunter, and occasionally, too, at the city’s most prestigious spot, the Grand Opera House.